Joni's cat's meow

                                   (colored text is hyperlinks to meow music)
Here is my story so far, since the yesterday's Cross-fit Worldwide group suffering. I had sent an email to 20 close friends of my dead public health friend Katrin Kohl, asking that we meet virtually. So far, 28 hours later, in the spirit of GOP Pandemic, 2 have responded. That brings forth the melody of Joni Mitchell's : "Down to You"

   Old friends seem indifferent
   You must have brought that on
   Old bonds have broken down
   Love is gone
   Ooh, love is gone

So I listen to it, and YouTube continues into Joni's Hejira album, and then; and then I hear cat's meow! meow! And I say to myself "Who know that Joni would play Dan Wei's music!" and return back to the track to send the link to Dan Wei (there is a whole genre of cat's meow Chinese pop music love songs), go back, go forth, and back, and I still have not found it. I did learn that Joni is a cat person, and cat's meow is a thing in "western" pop music too: 

"Now that's what I call meow"

If you find Joni's original, let me know :)

 

Garden State Parkway chase

 At 6am I hear S next to me, she says as clear as a bell:

He is running away and he is in a T-shirt with stripes, that's what I mean.

The rest of S's dream:

Trump had escaped, and she was following the chase on her Twitter feed. He was spotted going south on Garden State Parkway. Then he was spotted driving north on New Jersey Turnpike. Then many sightings were reported - there were Trump doubles driving in different directions. But troopers had no trouble identifying the @realDonaldTrump, they had a device reassembling the thermometer used in airports - you point it at person's forehead, and it tells you whether this is the real Donald Trump, or not.

He was quickly apprehended.

Hundred' mus med haler på

Hver lørdag kl 18:00 laver jeg crossfit med min Melchior/Westenholtz familie, og i dag opdagede jeg noget dybt chokerende:

Ikke en eneste har nogensinde hørt

Hundred' Mus Med Haler På

(version til voksne)

Jeg åd dem alle, hver og en, med hud og hår og museben. 

 

Martin, som nu er dansk diplomat i Indien, og Lysistrata er enige: dårlig opdragelse. Kender man ikke den sang, så skal man spises med hud og hår og museben.

(fortsat fra February 10, 1984)

 

Mads bliver 60: set fra Liliput

for helvede - Toni er allerede 1/4 århundrede????  og det føles som det er et øjeblik siden den hammer, og den høvlebænk. Sidst vi så hinanden var nogle år tilbage, der vi sad ansigt til ansigt i sen og travl lørdags S-tog, han urolig og optaget af teenageres ængstelige tænker, så jeg forstirrede ham ikke.

Men - han kan ikke forestille sig hvordan det gik for mig i Mads fødselsdag. Jeg skulle har skrevet det ned som en Swift's Gulliver kapitel. Jeg var så lille og -efter han forladte mobilen på bordet- helt ubemærket af de unge smukke kvinder som kastede mig rundt som en lille udansk Lilliputaner, i lommer og under underarme og over lårene mens de talte om de ting unge kvinder taler om fordi de faldt dem ikke ind at ind i mobilen lever der et voksent, dansktalende mand. Jeg sang, men de hørte mig ikke:

Hundred' mus med haler på og bittesmå sandaler på gik morgentur med smedens hest mens solen selv gik ned i vest. Hundred' mus fik ømme tæer og købte sig en tømme hver og red af sted i vældig fart til landet, hvor man har det rart. Hundred' mus fik musemad og flødeskum og brusebad og ost og spæk og meget mer' som ikke skal beskrives her. Hundred' mus gik hjem en nat og traf en gammel, gnaven kat der åd dem alle, hver og en med hud og hår og muse ben.

Hr. Kontorchef Aurland, Toni's søn:

 

 

venstre: Toni som teenager, efter demobilisering fra 2den verdenskrig partisanhær;

midten; som dansk businessman (tænk på Georg Madsen in Badehotellet)
højre: pensionist i firserne

Stanisław Lem, "De Impossibilitate Vitae and De Impossibilitate Prognoscendi"

 Bo Sixten Nilsson writes:

I got a message: "The following profile has an autosomal DNA match with your profile:

Hedviga Rakamarić

Estimated Relationship: 3rd to 4th Cousin"

Since I am a Swede living in Lund, south Sweden and believe that my ancestors have lived nearby in southern Sweden forever (at least several hundreds of years) the message is confusing. Do you know of any ancestors of yours that ended up in Sweden long ago?

Most of us have blond hair and blue eyes. Only my father’s mother had dark hair and dark eyes, as well as her mother and her grandparents. They all had Swedish names though, but didn’t really looked Swedish.

Your names indicate that you are living in some part of former Yugoslavia. It’s an interesting coincidence that I have spent several summers there in the 70’s and 80’s. I even managed to learn a bit of the language.

Dear Bo

My brother Radovan Belić maintains and understands our family tree, I defer to him to answer your query. I think Rakamarić's are genetically related to him but not me - no blood relations of mine.

I am Danish, and have visited Sweden often, have had Swedish girlfriends, have worked at Chalmers University, Sep 1984-Aug 1986, speak Swedish (badly, in manner of Danish speakers) so some recent genes left in Sweden are conceivable. No Swedish friend ever mentioned it, but Swedish women do not necessarily bring such details up.

A few centuries ago? That is fascinating. As they surely thought you in school, Swedes were a horrible plague upon whole of Europe, and one of the legends is that Croatian soldiers did the right thing, and killed Gustav II in the battle of Lützen, on 16. November 1632.

VojnaPovijest.vecernji.hr/vojna-povijest/poginuo-svedski-kralj-gustav-ii-adolf-1632-godine

My mother - a Croatian art historian told me about this, so it's very suspect unless there are non-Croatian sources corroborating that.

So Swedish soldiers certainly raped and pillaged in the South.

But immigrating to Sweden no sane male would do in 17th century, so making Swedish babies I find mysterious. A possibility is via my German origins:  docs.google.com Golmajers , Flickr.com Golmajer archive .

Radovan has the correct version, but basically my maternal grandfather's family can be traced to German serfs brought to (today's) Slovenia in 1658 or thereabouts. Don't know where they were before they were "brought" to Slovenia.

The good news is that in his book review "De Impossibilitate Vitae and De Impossibilitate Prognoscendi" Stanisław Lem proves that he (and consequently myself) could not have been born. The recursive genealogy traces him to Pleistocene. Along the way, Lem mentions that "[...] would not have encouraged his niece to marry the Croat for, though a giaour, it was a good and comely youth. In marrying the Croat, the grandmother on Mr. Mdivani’s mother’s side thus increased the chances of Professor Kouska’s birth", so there you have the Croatian connection.

Digging further, a few steps back, Lem notes: "As a result of the mixing of the chromosomes of that lubricious Paleopithecanthropus and that quadrumanous protohuman primatrice, there arose that type of meiosis and that linkage of gene loci which, transmitted through the next thirty thousand generations, produced on the visage of the young lady nurse that very smile, faintly reminiscent of the smile of Mona Lisa, from the canvas of Leonardo, which so enchanted the young surgeon Kouska."

Now, if you peruse this thing called "Google" you will discover that I actually exist, and busy myself with the impossibility of predicting the future. And predicting the past is so much harder. So it all makes sense.

We are talking about getting lost in a major rabbit hole here. If you dig up anything, please let me know...

Greetings to my Lund cousin 17 times removed :)
Predrag Cvitanović

 Bo Sixten Nilsson writes back:

Since my DNA matched with Hedviga Rakamarić (Kolaković) with a suggestion of 3rd to 4th cousin and you are not (DNA)-related to her I guess our common ancestor could very well be some 17 generations back. Some fun or interesting facts to point out:

Hedviga is a Swedish name as far as I know. It was quite common in the 19th century.

After my graduation from LTH (similar to Chalmers) in electronic engineering I worked there for two years, 1980-1982. After that I was mostly involved in running small companies,

I lived together with a woman from former Yugoslavia for 20 years. She grew up in Rijeka but was born in Serbia in the Banat close to the Romanian border. In the late 60’s she moved with her parents to Sweden where I first met her. Up until Yugoslavia blew up I visited all the republics except Macedonia, traveling around by car.

Skåne (Scania in English) where I live used to be a part of Denmark, but in one of those repeating wars between Sweden and Denmark Scania was occupied by Sweden. After the declaration of peace between these two countries in 1658 the new border remains - we still belong to Sweden. One of the most successful occupations in Europe I’ve heard.

Bornholm, a small Danish island close to the southeast coast of Scania, was also occupied, but the Danes bought it back to Denmark two years later. My grandfather’s mother was from there.

A good friend of mine, Jean Sellem a French guy born in Paris but living in Sweden for more than 50 years, is a former art professor - like your mother.

I do hope we will find some more solid clues about the DNA connection between Sweden and Croatia

On February 23, 2023 Harry Herlin pitches in:

"Howdy, This fellow looks a bit like you. Never knew about him but still …"

Predrag to Harry

My biological father, a red bourgeois (by the fact that his sister had joined partisans, worked in a cave with Tito towards the end of the war), traveled far and wide who after the liberation, was very fond of making (and leaving) babies, but the dates do not quite match. Ronka, handsome as he was (every Belić, but one, is very handsome) was born October 1945 but Germans had already surrendered on 8 May 1945, so a Massachusetts pregnancy would require time travel, "Terminator" style. But we should not give up hope. Can you check if Bo Sixten Nilsson is our common cousin, a few times removed?

Say their names : Berta Kaplan Solla

My mother-in-law Berta Kaplan Solla died the night of June 26, 2020.

In her assisted living home in Buenos Aires 40 seniors tested CVID-19 positive. She also tested CVID-19 positive, but asymptomatic, and was immediately moved to a hospital in Buenos Aires for observation. Technically, the cause of death was probably cardiac failure. She was 95, pretty much bedridden by old-age, but clear-headed to the end, and the morning before her death she was expecting a group phone call with two of her sons and her daughter. There was some technical snafu, and it did not happen.

So it was kind of death that was sudden and perhaps welcome, after a long and eventful life. Her children are at peace with it, but, as we all know, that kind of loss takes years to work through. If ever.

Berta that American  friends remember from many years ago, when she was still coming on her annual visits was a friskier, chain-smoking and excitable Berta.

In Chicago (2003)

In Buenos Aires, with her grandchildren (2005)

Working out the mother-daughter relationship kinks (2010)

Say their names : Vicki Greco

Vicki, mother of my gentle and sweet colleague Ed Greco is dead, after 3 weeks battle, a victim of US government's inaptly handled pandemic. She was 62, active, and in perfect health. She worked as a nurse here in Atlanta screening folks that walked into her clinic. Ed had to remove her off life support after she fought with COVID-19 for almost four weeks. It completely destroyed her healthy lungs. In one of her last conversations with Ed she complained that people wouldn't put on a mask or would lie about their symptoms when they walked into the clinic. "Be really careful everyone and don't trust leadership to make the right decision for you personally" says Ed, who is quietly very very angry.

Ed's tribute to his mother:

Victoria Greco, age 62, passed away June 25th 2020 in Atlanta, Georgia after battling COVID-19 for three weeks. Vicki was born into a large Italian-American family in Passaic, NJ just months before she and her extended family relocated to Orlando, Florida. She grew up surrounded by siblings and cousins with grandparents just two houses away. She could be quiet and unassuming just as easily as she could be fierce and indomitable, a contradiction in character that earned her the nickname “rooster”. Vicki had a passion for new adventure and learning. She loved to read and her house is filled with an eclectic collection of books, bottles, and maps. She loved to fish in the surf at dawn, ride motorcycles through the misty mountains and small towns of Appalachia, and explore the ancient paths of our National Parks with her husband. She was the type of person you could call and invite on a trip, exotic or mundane, and the answer would always be an enthusiastic yes!

Vicki lived a life in voluntary service to the well-being of others, often caring for and sheltering the sick and destitute in her home. This was a kindness she and her husband also extended to nature. At home, Vicki would often be found tending to the native plants and pollinators in her yard while her adopted dogs slept lazily nearby. When she turned 50, she realized a lifelong desire to work in medicine and enrolled in nursing school. After graduating, she moved to Atlanta to help raise her granddaughters and began a second career in pediatrics. Her white hair, brown eyes, and silly scrubs brought smiles to many children and their families.

At the core of Vicki was a love for family. Making Christmas cookies with her grandmother, Sunday dinners at her Dad’s, cooking holiday meals with her sisters, sun kissed at the beach with her husband and granddaughters, she was happiest when she was surrounded by those she loved. For those who loved her, she was an unbreakable rock that could shoulder any burden you placed at her feet with grace. Survivors include her husband, Richard Hooker; son and daughter in-law Edwin and K. Elizabeth Greco, mother, Carole Bertone; father and stepmother, Anthony and Sallie Greco; brother, Salvatore Greco; sister, Elizabeth Kulow, sister, Karen Kania; sister, Janice Manley; granddaughters: Madeline, Miranda and Margaret Greco. She was preceded in death by her son, Anthony Hooker. In lieu of flowers, please watch a sunrise, jump feet first into a cold Florida spring, and wear a mask in public.

Do listen to the May 29th NY Times -The Daily "One Hundred Thousand Lives" podcast, commemorating the first 100,000 US victims of the Trump pandemic.

About Ed: storycollider.org Marriage stories about making it work (July 1, 2019)

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Pastor Martin Niemöller

Two nights ago Rayshard Brooks was killed by a Georgia policeman Garrett Rolfe for the crime of sleeping over a hangover in his car. While black. After 40 minutes of polite banter they killed him. Witnesses claimed officers “put on plastic gloves and picked up their shell casings after they killed [Brooks] before rending aid.” And in watching video of the incident, the legal team “counted 2 minutes and 16 seconds before [officers] even checked [Brooks’s] pulse.”

They had came for us. Already. And we did not speak out. Follow my Scout Schultz thread.



And did I mention how important it is to have independent journalism? Were it not for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, all news would be controlled by the State of Georgia, be it through Georgia Tech administration or Georgia State police, and we would have never even known that a student in a moment of mental crisis was killed by police in front of his dorm, to the horror of students watching the killing through dorm windows.

First walk outside

For the first time I exited on foot and walked 5 blocks to CVS to pickup an urgent medication. Glorious day.

2/3 people wear masks. The COVID-19 trends are all downward. The Stay at Home order for Illinois has been lifted and the City of Chicago has entered a new phase: Cautiously Reopen.

State of Georgia Certified Manager

10:30am I had started sometime this morning, only paused to talk to renowned manager Andy Zangwill for moral support, and I’m still at it. I’m staring at a FeeblePoint slide entitled “Safe Harbor Statement”

11:30 As with COVID-19, I fear I’m at the beginning of beginning.

The Great State of Jawja’s self-elected Guvrnr Kemp mandates that I finish something called “SCORM Object” “Introduction to Manager Self-Service “ today (!?), with 80% a passing grade. If I succeed, 9 painful robocall female voice videos away, I should be able to “Add Info to Talent Profile for an Employee.”

12:30pm: I’m learning much about things I did not know existed:
               “All prior transactions which would require a PSF form will now be initiated and completed in Manager Self Service. 
                Many of these transactions will now be found in the My Team tile”.
                WTF is PSF?
2pm: The only rub is – the videos show some Oracle product on something called “OneUSG Connect”.
               But I have no idea what is it that I’m supposed to log into.
2:30pm: Aha. It’s still techworks.gatech.edu – but it does not respond to login attempts.
               Time to take a lunch break.
3:30pm: Did not like FireFox, even after flushing the cache, rebooting etc. But it opened in Opera.
3:45pm: I’m in! Figured out the drop-down “manager self-service.” Finally, the wool has fallen from my eyes - I’m a manager because:
                “My Team” has 14 people (!?) and 4 unfilled positions. Of course!
                No wonder I am such an important manager. I’m a big cog in the Board of Regents mill.
                OK, some of them I remember from 2001. One of my anno 2020 grad students is on "My Team," the second one is not.
                But the two manage themselves. Sensible enough not to entrust themselves to their adviser’s “management”.
           Now I understand why Shaun addresses every seminar announcement to “You and your teams”. She’s so ahead of the curve.

I’m taking a l-o-o-n-g break to gather strength for the next click.

4:20pm: I’m ready for [Assessment]. Ten multiple-choice questions.
                I understand nothing. Humbling to be an undergraduate.
                I click resolutely on, guided –POTUS like- by my infallible undergraduate intuition.
                Wow!
                I aced it in the first try! 90/100!

I am now a fully qualified and empowered Jawja Board of Regents manager. Give way.

 5:30pm:  I am fried for the week. Hope to regain strength by the Friday's Happy Hour.

if 2020 only were cancelled.... COVID-19

To Sir M.:

the testimonials from the surviors (or those who have since died) are horrific, make dying from COVID-19 appear much worse than dying from a flu-induced pneumonia. Here are a few, worth listening to

NYTimes.com/2020/03/30/podcasts/the-daily/coronavirus-new-jersey.html

I do not mind dying, but this is exceptionally miserable, protracted way to die, provided there is oxygen (8 cylinders, each of the size you know from physics labs, per patient per day) and a ventialtor. Without, death is quicker.

In addition, when you live in a 3rd world country without a universal health system, and without a functioning government, this happens:

NYTimes.com/2020/03/29/podcasts/the-daily/the-sunday-read-what-i-learned-when-my-husband-got-coronavirus.html

After a few weeks of sending sick back to their families to be cared for, Chinese government understood that they will never stop this until they isolate the sick in government run field hospitals. US is letting the pandemic come in waves, starting physical separation in different states only when the next wave had already taken of with the same exponential doubling rate (today Detroit, Chicago, ...) to make it all more protracted. We still -today!- have states in the Murdoch la-la land with no shelter-in-place order, and this very Sunday megachurches are still packed, exempt, by GOP governors, from physical separation rules.



(Carlos Amato, SA)

One could argue that death rates as a percentage of the population are lower now. Still, that we are letting COVID-19 give Spanish flu run for money is mind-boggling a century later, for an entirely preventable pandemic, with public health measures not only known, but already proven to work for this very same virus in South Korea, Singapore, China, etc.

Das Leben in den Zeiten von COVID-19

Ich habe keinen meiner Schüler beim LESEN beobachtet, aber für diejenigen, die es tun, empfehle ich es - das funktioniert mit 100%iger Sicherheit.
https://twitter.com/ethicistforhire/status/1237319901880168449

Dank Gottes habe ich auch Wittgenstein zur Hand, falls ein zusätzlicher Schutz erforderlich ist.

Liebe zu allen, ob groß oder klein
Meister der Sozialen Distanzierung

The entire 2020 will be cancelled

if the memo has not reached you yet -

By the power vested in me by my mother, and following the recommendations of CDC, WHO and Drs. Birx and Fauci, I hereby declare, that my 2020 birthday is rescheduled as 74th birthday to take place in 2021 at a safe location, with all dancing virtual, and all social distancing strictly enforced.

To remind you of what you are missing:https://youtu.be/xxfT4q55AhU

As a matter of fact, the entire 2020 will be cancelled - it will be erased from our collective memories, and we'll start 2020 afresh, but just call it 2021.

We are safe in our Chicago cocoon.

Getting to Chicago seems like eons ago, so I have to write the date down: March 17, 2020.

Marie Antoinette moment & and my French intellectual objects

Me:

"Now Sara and I are cocooned in for a long wait, starting the wait with the D'Artagnan duck, D'Artagnan cassoulet, and cheeses flown in from fromages.com. Our Marie Antoinette moment :)"

My French intellectual does not even bother to correct me:

Well, Marie-Antoinette died in October 1793. She was guillotined on Place de la Concorde. D'Artagnan, from the four Muskateers, was a character of 3 novels written by Alexandre Dumas in the mid-19th century based on a real person, Charles de Batz-Castelmore d'Artagnan (c. 1611–1673), who was supposed to live under the reign of the French King Louis XIII and his Prime Minister Richelieu between 1631 (when he reached the age of 20) and 1643 (when Louis XII died). Louis XIII married Anne from Austria in 1615, a Queen mentioned in the story of d'Artagnan, with a jewel plot.

Just to let you know that a jump of more than 150 years in time is quite a stretch. But in your situation, in Chicago, I supposed that the product from this d'Artagnan company must look like an amazing luxury!

However, I can find fresh duck at a butcher selling only duck, including foie gras. I would never dare even mention the name of this company considered as the most shameful thing ever produced in the Southwest of France, so low is the quality of their products. People would have banned me from the entire covered market I loved to go shopping to, for the rest of my life.

Me:

I stand humbly corrected by 150 years :) OK, OK, I know that Marie Antoinette never said what she said. This is a tale told only in the Anglo-Saxon world. But I do have a question. In colloquial English "Marie Antoinette moment" refers to her reputedly having responded to news of people rioting because they had no bread by "Let them eat cakes"

But I always wondered... She never said that, did she? Sounds like post-guillotine Republican propaganda, no?

My French intellectual:

OK for Marie-Antoinette in the English version. But the quote "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" (let them eat brioche) is due to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his book "Confessions" published in 1782 (7 years before the beginning of the Revolution). However, he does not name the "princess" in his text. His text was only intending to illustrate the insensitivity of the aristocrats towards the people. But he probably invented the story, because no trace of it could be found in the contemporary documents. The only reference can be found in the "Mémoires" of a certain Mademoiselle de Boigne, published only in 1903. In those, the quote is attributed to Madame Victoire, instead, a daughter of the King Louis XIV who was actually a bit dumb but very generous. She intended to help and not to mock the poor. She proposed the crust used in the pâté which was not eaten by the high society,. This crust was used only to protect the meat inside during cooking. In her memoir Miss De Boigne writes

“Madame Victoire had very little wit and extreme kindness. She was the one who said, tears in her eyes, in a time of scarcity when we spoke of the sufferings of the unfortunate people lacking bread: "But my God, if they could resign themselves to eating pâté crust!"

The quote was attributed to Marie Antoinette later, and I have no document showing when. Only the symbol was kept. I never heard this quote in France. I heard it only while in the US. Another myth about France, I thought. But there is a Wikipedia page, in French, about this quote. So some French scholars are aware of it.

Life in Trumpistan, season 4, episode 3 : Fleeing Jawja

I'm up, starting to get ready to hit the road.

What got me going was Putin's idiot who - with the help of his basement Nazi - surmised -correctly- that the most xenophobic way of infecting the maximal number of people living here would be to announce that all flights from EU will be shut down the next day. Worked like charm. On Saturday, all major US airport international arrivals looked like this:

with everyone already infected made to stand together with the yet uninfected, stewing side by side for anything up to 8 hours - Mein Gott!

(Hartsfield Delta check-in looked like this still on March 22 - there is no hope for this country). 

For the next step, I did not wait for Georgia Tech's president who listens to the self-elected, vote-suppressor governor Kemp who follows Putin's idiot who watches Fox Channel 24/7 to close the campus. I believe in exponentials. I teach exponentials.You cannot beat exponentials. This might be a vacation on planet Fox, but on this planet it is the worst pandemic since 1918, exploding at the same exponential rate, everywhere. And you cannot beat exponentials, unless you work very hard to decrease the infection rate : the difference between 100 and 1000 infected is only 10 days. Then it is 10,000 and then it is 100,000 and ...

Exponentials said that in a week Chicago would be shut down (correct), and in two weeks we would leave Italy in the dust behind us (correct). I immediately rented a car, packed it with contraband:

and March 17 I left. Atlanta. Wagner's Götterdämmerung would have been the right music for the drive- but instead I went for country while driving through Nashville, otherwise talking-head podcasts. I particularly liked the one about our "Inner fish" (S had bought me the book, enjoyed it as well)

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/03/16/88-neil-shubin-on-evolution-genes-and-dramatic-transitions/

It took driving 12 hours straight to meet S at a sketchy south Chicago gas station and transfer the contraband into the trunk of our Chicago car. I got tenderized into minced meat :) Every time I got out of the car to stretch legs - very socially distanced from other seniors going in big circles around each other - I felt the ground moving around me and the engine buzzing under my. For hours after getting out of the freaking car I was like a sailor on solid land - the ground was swaying under me, and I could feel the engine rumbling throughout my legs and ass. Persisted at home the whole evening until I fell asleep. Is this normal? I'll take a 12 hour bike ride over that, any time. 

On a positive note, I was not held up by 2ndA vigilantes, even though I had packed a very visible load of toilet paper on the back seat.

Now S has me where she wants me - we are cocooned in for a long wait, starting with the wait for the D'Artagnan duck that arrives today. Our Marie Antoinette moment :) Here is the view:



I have not been out of the apartment in weeks. It's a small disruption on the life of last few years, where S had mostly worked from our Chicago apartment, and so did I, in long periods (she had both knee replacements over past few years).


PS from Steve McDonald, reporting live from the lowlands: Just remember you cannot have the Corona without a lime.

PPS Getting to Chicago seems like eons ago, so I have to write the date down: March 17, 2020.

PPPS For you, who read this, but do not live in US, and do not have a woman prime minister: If it is any consolation, our idiot is more incompetent than your idiot.

Officer Tyler Beck who killed Scout Schultz won’t face charges

continued from my previous post  (March 12, 2020) 

 
ajc.com : Tech officer who shot, killed student won’t face charges.

Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard has decided not to bring criminal charges against a Georgia Tech police officer who shot and killed a student armed only with a multi-tool.

“[...] all of the available evidence indicates Schultz decided to take his own life by provoking police officers to shoot him,”

Howard said in a statement. Two use-of-force experts contracted by the DA’s office concluded the shooting was justified, Howard said. Attorney Chris Stewart, who represents Schultz’s parents, said the “suicide by cop” defense doesn’t justify the shooting.

“There’s no such thing,” Stewart said. “It’s disappointing to see the DA perpetuate this myth.” 

Anonymous: Scout Schultz was a burning flare maskmagazine.com (Sept 2017)

Continued here (June 13, 2020)